On any other day, I might’ve punched Tanner in the face. On that day, I just didn’t have it in me. I was a miserable, mopey six-year-old whose knuckles still hurt and was hobbling because my big toe was bruised. So I took his hand and let him yank me up off the grass, then dusted myself off and accepted his apology.
Two decades later, and I’d never looked back. Or not often, at least. Sliding my thumb across the green bar on my screen, I raised the phone to my ear. “Tanner, what’s up man?”
“I have good news, Jer.”
Tanner’s definition of good news and mine differed drastically on occasion. “Yeah? What is it?”
I heard him thank the doorman and step out of his building onto the busy sidewalk. Tanner’s apartment was almost directly across the park from mine. Vendors called out and horns blared, but he ignored them all. “There’s a new club opening in Manhattan tonight, and yours truly has tickets.”
“Good for yours truly, but I’m not going.”
“What?” I didn’t need to be able to see him to know he’d stopped and was running his hand through his shaggy light brown hair. “Why?”
“How about because last time, we ended up half-naked with our pictures splashed all over the Times. A baseball player, a model, an e-sports champ and a billionaire walk into a bar… We sound like the beginning of a bad joke. I’m not into that again. Didn’t they have a shot of you with a feather boa?”
Tanner chuckled. “They did. Good times.”
“It was an epic night,” I agreed. “One that shall not be repeated. My dad will fuck me up good if I get myself into a situation like that right now.”
“Shut up, he won’t,” Tanner argued, then yelled for someone to watch it. “You’re going. We haven’t all been out together for ages. We’ll lie low.”
Lying low was difficult for us. In high school, Tanner and I became friends with Bart and Shawn. With Tanner now being a baseball player, Shawn a model, Bart an e-sportsman and me being, well, me, the media ate it up when we were all together.
Still, Tanner was right. As close-knit as we were, the four of us hadn’t had time to hang out in too long. “Fine, damn it. I’ll go. I’ll be DD.”
Tanner howled with laughter. “Lies. You’d never last as DD. No way. We’re walking, dude. Meet us at Shawn’s apartment. We’ll have a couple of drinks before we head out.”
“I’ll be there.” I would just have to dig deep to find some of that self-restraint thing people were always talking about if I saw things were getting out of hand.
Restraint wasn’t my thing. I believed in living life to the fullest. God knew how abruptly it could be yanked away from you. I was determined to make every second count. Balls to the wall all day, every day.
Only, it wasn’t so straightforward these days. The carefree, party boy I used to be came out to play at night, but then left me feeling like shit in the morning. Add to that the pressures of now being my father’s only son and things got depressing.
Fuck it. I could be who I was and who I had to be, no problem. All I had to do was avoid the damn photographers. Couldn’t be that hard. They didn’t follow me around. I just usually gave them prime opportunities walking out of a club. I wouldn’t do that tonight, that was all there was to it.
Satisfied I wasn’t fucking up all the hard work I’d put in to “man up” as my father called it, I went back to my bedroom to grab shoes and a tie and got ready for work.
When I opened my front door to leave, it wasn’t the usual faint scent of cleaning chemicals that hit my nostrils. I got punched in the nose by the smell of rotting flowers and pungent roses.
My foot came down on something squishy and soft. What the fuck?
Heaps of dead flowers and roses were strewn everywhere in the hallway. Gingerly, I lifted my foot and looked around for an explanation.
I found it skewered to my door. A large knife protruded from the center of my door, a note written on pink stationery hanging from the blade.
The paper ripped away from the knife easily when I tugged on it. A familiar scent wafted off the stationery. Feminine. Musk. Heavy. It brought back memories of feeling heels digging into my ass and sharp fingernails clawing at my shoulders while the party raged on right outside the coatroom door.
Jannie. I knew the note was from her before I even read it. Sure enough, her loopy cursive scrawl was on the paper threatening to “get me good.”
Crumpling the note in my fist, I locked up and tossed the paper in the trash basket while I waited for the elevator. I shook my head, mentally adding “get locks changed” to my to-do list for the day.
Only in fucking New York.